2008 R+D Awards

Architecture has evolved, judging from the winners of our second annual R+D Awards. Witness a façade that breathes, a recycling network based on the human intestinal tract, an exterior lighting system inspired by photosynthesis, and other such wonders. If

What began as an exercise in designing a new recycling kiosk for downtown Denver became a larger meditation on the solid waste collection systems of modern cities, resulting in the design of a large-scale system for moving waste.

The problem of corrosion in precast concrete is often attributed to the steel rebar reinforcement; steel being a corrodible material, it is especially vulnerable during the curing and drying process, when it is locked into an environment that is very wet.

One of Columbia University's newest facilities has a very specialized purpose: the storage and conservation of projection slides, a staple of art history and archaeology instruction. In this project, architects Marble Fairbanks created an enclosure for th

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill is revisiting one of its seminal projects of the 1950s, the Inland Steel Building. The firm has been asked to renovate the Chicago landmark into an office hotel, a building type that offers potential tenants a sustainable and fu

Designed as a temporary canopy for the DesCours festival, an annual weeklong celebration of design sponsored by AIA New Orleans, Hover is a luminous canopy featuring both LEDs and photovoltaic cells that power them. Höweler + Yoon designed Hover—an entire

Living City explores the notion that building façades and access to fresh air are the frontiers of public space in urban areas—that in the future, façades will belong to and serve residents as streets and parks do today. To that end, architects David Benj

Set to be deployed as a nontraditional façade for the planned Hotel Forest in Barcelona, the Artificial Leaf is a draping system of light-emitting modules suspended on steel mesh. The scheme is based on the analogy that if a city is a forest, each buildin

Architect Eric Owen Moss uses glass rods not just for their formal properties, but as structural components. The result is A Surface of Points, a system of deep cable trusses that incorporate glass tubes as compression members.